A Discussion of the newly dropped Thori'dal bought up a lively discussion on Legendary weapons in my guild chat the other day, which has in turn set my own mental wheels turning. Looking at the difference between the pre-Burning Crusade Legendaries and the Burning Crusade Legendaries, there's one big difference that stands out (beyond the level difference): The pre-BC Legendaries were quested, while the BC Legendaries have been drops.

The clear-cut off seems to suggest that at some point, Blizzard decided that creating long, involved quests in order to obtain Legendary weapons just wasn't the way to go, and they'd rather let the RNG take care of distributing Legendaries. But the question is, did they make the right choice? There's good arguments for both sides.

You know, if there's one thing I have noticed digging through my bags, it's that I have a whole mess of trinkets. Of all the gear slots, it seems like trinkets are some of the most versatile and swappable. Depending on whether you need a bit more hit rating, a bit more critical strike rating, a bit more mana regeneration, a bit more health, a bit more armor, or you plan to go PvPing for a bit, you can fill up bags upon bags alone with a whole bunch of trinkets, waiting for the right moment to spring them.

Then there's the really bad ass trinkets. I'm not talking trinkets that are traditionally defined as "useful," I'm talking about the trinkets that make you into the life of the party. The ones that make other people notice you, make them stand up and say, "Woah, that guy is using some CRAZY trinkets." You know what I mean. Stop trying to get yourself that Ashtongue Talisman, these are the REAL deal.

Pre-Burning Crusade raiders will back me up on this: The Qiraji mount from AQ40 was pretty sweet. Not only did it look pretty cool, but the idea of summoning a giant bug to burrow up through the ground and allow you to ride it was fun too.

Unfortunately, ever since the Burning Crusade came out, my poor, poor bug has wasted away in the bank. I have been haunted by the thought of it being so lonely in there ever since. I can't even watch Starship Troopers without feeling nostalgia and a twinge of guilt to imagine good old bug-bug waiting forever to be ridden again. I honestly do think that if they ever removed the restrictions on my bug, I'd ride it everywhere. I suppose it might make a few Scarab Lords feel a bit less special about their ride-anywhere battle tanks, but... come on, they get the BLACK color, and that's totally unique enough by itself, right?

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter, since Bornakk chimed in on a forum post praising the bug mounts today to say that they don't plan to let you use the crystal outside the instance any time soon. He did suggest that you could use it to link in chat and taunt people who never had one. I say I'd rather ride mine. I'd even do a big old quest line or pay 2000 gold, like some of the people in the thread suggested.

On the plus side, he didn't say they'd NEVER remove the restriction, so maybe there's still hope. Hey, if nothing else, we'll probably be headed into Azjol-Nerub come Wrath of the Lich King, right? Considering we'll likely fight bugs there, maybe we'll be able to use our crystals in there, or at least tame some new mounts.

Straight from the forums: What's the best boss fight in the game?

Personally, having been up through Gruul, I remain a big fan of Jeklik in Zul'Gurub-- it's got just the right mix of old fashioned tanking, AoE, and (eventually) all-out chaos that a great boss battle should have. People are saying that C'thun is a classic, but like most players, I've never had the chance to see him. In terms of five-man bosses, the quality on those really jumped up in Outland. I'd say Heroic Capacitus is fun, with the positive/negative mechanic borrowed from Thaddius. And Sepethrea's little Tron room in the Mechanar is a good time, too.

But I'm probably forgetting quite a few good ones. What is the best boss fight in the game?

Another Phat Loot Request this week (we'll get back to Zul'Aman next week, because there's a lot of great stuff in there). Tachaeon from Turalyon sent us this ring that is strangely remarkable in a few different ways.

Name: Band of Icy Depths
Type: Epic Ring
Armor: N/A
Abilities:

• +19 Stamina, +20 Frost resistance, which was nice back in the days of Naxx-- now, it's not as big, but it's still a nice boost.
• And on Equip: Allows underwater breathing. That's right, just like the Hydrocane, which we covered over a year ago, this is one of the items in the game that gives this buff without a Warlock or Shaman around. This one's a lot harder to get, however.

How to Get It: This baby comes from the AQ gate opening questline-- which you can do even if the gates have already opened on your server. WoW Wiki has the long writeup on exactly how the quests are all done, and it's a darn shame this quest will almost never be undertaken again. Blizzard must have put a lot of work into developing all these little plotlines, and there is a ton of lore and great story to be found in this thing, but it's all hidden behind a Brood of Nozdormu reputation grind, and considering no one has any need to open up AQ any more (except, of course, on the servers where it's not yet opened), almost no one will ever see it. Bummer. I guess Blizzard is learning from their mistakes more and more, and bringing more epic content to everyone able to do it, but it's a shame that this great, gigantic quest chain has gotten lost in the mix of expansion upgrades and smaller guilds.

This ring is hidden in the second part of the chain, where your goal is to get back the colored shards from the dragonflights around Azeroth. Within the Blue Shard chain, you receive this ring as a quest reward. Definitely a long, long way to go just to get a ring that will let you breathe underwater, but I think the strange placement of this ring as a quest reward is one reason Tachaeon wanted it covered here.

And finally, the strangest thing about this epic ring...

Getting Rid of it: .. is found when you sell it to a vendor. Finally, something interesting to put in the "Getting Rid of It" section! Yes, this ring sells for... wait for it... 82g 80s 85c, making it, to my knowledge, the item with the highest vendor price ingame. I don't know if this ring really qualifies for Phat loot, but it is definitely one of the most weirdly budgeted items in Azeroth.

Considering that Kel'Thuzad is basically "the boss of shipping WoW" (according to Metzen at BlizzCon), then Atiesh, the Legendary caster item that once belonged to Medivh, is the greatest item in levels 1-60. But we're at level 70 now, and when we get to level 80, Atiesh, a Legendary item, might end up looking more like a stick than anything else. So Asheen asks, knowing that Naxx is set to be "repurposed" for our trip to Northrend: will Atiesh make a return?

It's a cool idea. Bornakk says, "Maybe." There are a few tangles in the plan: currently, Atiesh requires a trip to C'thun in AQ to get the base (I believe because Brann Bronzebeard put it there), which is a 40 man raid that most guilds don't want to bother with. And of course the stats would need some updating-- it's a nice staff, but not exactly a Legendary level 80 any more. And finally, the staff provides a portal to Karazhan, and at level 80, will that really be as amazing as it used to be?

Bornakk also says the lore needs to be set in place, but that's a copout-- Blizzard can do whatever they want (what if the Kirin Tor decided to repurpose Atiesh and combined it with a new base that didn't need to come from AQ40?). But the biggest issue with bringing back Atiesh is that there's so many other good items that could just replace it. Medivh's staff is hardly the most important item in the game any more, and as Bornakk points out, even though Medivh had great power, it didn't necessarily all come from his staff.

I can't wait to see Naxx's new purpose in WotLK, but there are too many old items floating around for Blizzard to worry about updating. I'd rather see new legendaries, and maybe even some artifacts, come out of the new Naxx and Northrend.

They don't come much more rare than this baby-- you had 10 hours to get it, and the overwhelming odds are that you didn't anyway.

Name: Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal
Type: Legendary Ground Mount
Speed: 100%
Abilities:

• Well technically, the crystal isn't the mount-- it just summons one. It's the bug looking thing you see above.
• It's called a Silithid Scarab, or more formally, a Black Qiraji Battle Tank.
• Can be ridden anywhere in the world. More on why that's so special in a second.
• And while this may be a "bug" (get it?), players are reporting that there's something special about the way this mount is summoned-- while you do have to be out of combat and unmounted to actually summon it (like all mounts), you don't have to be either when you start summoning it (unlike other mounts). So you could be in combat (like, in a battleground), start to summon the mount, and as long as you've left combat by the time it finished, you'll be mounted.

How to Get It: You can't. At least, most of you can't. Lots of people can get non-black bug mounts-- they drop pretty regularly in Ahn'Qiraj 40, and can only be used in that instance (and not in combat-- apparently the bugs are very skittish).

But the black qiraji mounts are very, very rare, and the reason is this: they were given only to players who hit the gong outside of Ahn'Qiraj only during a 10-hour period after the opening of the gates.

So here's how to get one. First of all, if you're on a server where the gates have been open for more than 10 hours (which is most of them), you're out of luck. So you'll have to roll a toon on one of the newer servers-- yes, there are still quite a few servers out there who have not yet opened the AQ gates.

Then, of course, you'll have to get your character all the way up to 60, so you can start the questline that will give you the mallet you need to bang the gong to open the gates. In order to actually finish this questline, however, (which starts in Silithus, if you really want to try), you'll have to go all over Azeroth and do all kinds of super heroic stuff-- in short, you'll need to be backed by a guild full of people who know what they're doing. Oh, and then there's the whole "War Effort" thing. If you were playing back when AQ first came out, you'll remember that opening the gates requires the whole server-- Horde and Alliance-- to collect tons and tons of items for "the War Effort."

But after all that is finished (all in a day's work, right?), you can finally take your Scepter of Ahn'Qiraj down to the gates of AQ, hit the gong, and this black bug mount is yours. Oh, and if you're not the first to open the gates, you can still get the mount, you just have to hit the gong (which means you need to finish the quest also) sometime within 10 hours of when it is first hit. See why the mount is so rare?

Getting Rid of It: You're joking, right? Vendors won't even accept this thing from you.

Last Sunday my guild wiped a couple times while clearing out what remained of AQ40, then went ahead and wiped on C'Thun more times than I care to admit. 2 repair bots were used, plus all my armor was broken at the end of the raid. Repair cost? About 35 gold. I used 20 major mana pots, a stack of healing pots and countless bandages.This weekend I will be doing the same thing. Once we down C'Thun, we will turn our attention to Naxx, and I will be blowing through even more resources as we learn the encounters. I can't imagine the repair and consumables bill for people truly at the cutting edge in Naxx. Trying new bosses without any established strategy whatsoever has to be incredibly expensive.

More and more I have noticed that I spend the majority of my non-raiding time farming for herbs, cloth and gold, so as to continue my raiding habit. In fact, I think I spend upwards of two hours a day mindlessly farming. I spice things up by watching TV or chatting on the phone, but it is tedious. Yes, raiding takes up a lot of time, but the amount of time spent farming to stay one step ahead is almost a separate mini-game of it's own. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to hunt down some Dreamfoil.